by Will Wight
He looked down, seeing the sliced and broken sea-stalks smoldering on the sand.
And, as he watched, they burst into open flame.
Until that point, the greatest source of fire aura had been the furniture in the wreckage of Ekeri's shelter. That generated enough red-hot aura to fuel her Ruler technique.
But the Void Dragon's Dance also required destruction. The more the fire consumed, the more destruction aura it released along with the heat. Now, there was enough for him to work with.
Extending his spirit, he gathered threads of black and red energy, controlling it with his madra, wrapping it together, coiling it around himself. The air rippled with heat, his skin tingled, and the edges of his robes started to dissolve as though under the effect of invisible flames.
Holding her larger whip in one hand and a Forged whip in the other, Ekeri rushed after him. She leaped, grabbing onto one Carp with her tail and swinging over a second, snapping sacred beast. She kicked off another, slapped the next in two, and came down on him with both whips descending. All the while, fires dimmed nearby as she gathered fire aura to defend herself.
He was almost out of madra. He couldn't compete with her in endurance, in physical strength, or in technique. The longer this battle went on, the more options he'd lose.
She'd undoubtedly survived more battles than he had. She'd read his Ruler attack the second he started preparing it, gathering up aura to prepare a defense. By the time Lindon played his last card, she'd still have a full hand.
But, as Orthos had taught him, the Path of Black Flame had some good cards.
When the red and black vital aura had been wrapped together in roughly equal measure, Lindon braided it according to the Ruler technique he'd learned almost a year before.
He turned and faced Ekeri's whips. His left hand flowed with the power necessary to control the Void Dragon's Dance, so he couldn't move it, but his Remnant arm reached out and seized a nearby fish. He dragged it in front of him, using its body to shield him from her attack.
Before it hit, he pushed his left arm forward. With it, he pushed out the tightly coiled aura. It wrestled against his madra, trying to spring free, and his arm and spirit trembled.
Golden light sliced the Silverfang Carp in half, and the second whip descended. He raised his right hand to catch it, though it burned his Remnant palm with a piercing pain that shot through his spirit. At the same time, visible only in his Copper sight, a tightly wound disc of red-and-black aura reached Ekeri.
She pushed against the fire aura with her own spirit, and in only a moment she would unravel the technique.
Instead, Lindon clenched his left fist.
And unleashed the Void Dragon's Dance.
The aura exploded into a cyclone of spinning flame. It stretched from the ground to the ceiling of the dome, and the heat scorched his face. The column of swirling black-and-red fire swallowed Ekeri, then the Carp around her were consumed, followed by those farther away as the technique grew larger and larger.
But this was not just a fire technique. Empowered by destruction aura, the flames devoured material in a blink. What would normally take hours for the fire to burn instead disappeared instantly.
Every Silverfang Carp touched by the flame was consumed in a snap, becoming little more than ash that drifted down. Lindon projected Blackflame madra around himself as the technique expanded, but the Void Dragon's Dance was over in only a second.
All of the nearby fish, the remaining stalks, and the yellow-glowing plants had been completely destroyed in a circle around him. Losing the lights left him in shadow, but he couldn't feel the attendants anymore either. Everything within a hundred yards had vanished, leaving Lindon in a world of sand and ash.
Except for one other survivor. A dragon could not be so easily burned.
Though he had hoped.
Ekeri was only singed, her clothes damaged and smoking, her scales charred. She knelt on one knee with whips crossed before her, spirit trembling. As the ash cleared, her eyes snapped open. They blazed gold.
He braced his knees to keep from collapsing.
There were only a few scraps of madra left in his Blackflame core, but he released a quick, sloppy dragon's breath to keep her at bay.
It didn't help. Enforcer technique rippling around her legs, she flowed around his attack, letting her Forged whip vanish in order to strike with her weapon. He ducked it, but she was clearly prepared for him.
Her tail slipped around behind him, locking him into place. Then her clawed hand struck for his chest.
Lindon was past the scope of his plan. They had practiced for everything they could, but no fight could be fully anticipated. At some point, he had to lean on his experience and training.
He only had enough Blackflame madra for one more technique, so he let it go.
And took the hit.
Her claws pierced his chest around his gold badge. They plunged through his skin, sending blood flowing down his stomach.
The pain tore at his consciousness, but he hadn't accepted the hit by accident. If she wasn't this close, so close that he could smell the ash on her skin, he would never have been able to hit her himself.
So he shoved his Empty Palm into her core.
Her Enforcer technique vanished and her whip went dark, reverting to nothing more than a needle-pointed silver hilt. Gold eyes widened, and her reptilian lips parted.
Heat crept back into Lindon's eyes as he pulled Blackflame for one last time.
The dragon's breath was only the width of two fingers, but it drilled straight through her heart. Severed, her necklaces fell to the ground, leaving loose pearls and chunks of jade and links of gold chain tumbling over the sand.
Lindon shoved her away, stumbling backwards, trying to conjure up enough madra for a Burning Cloak. He should have gone for her head. Now he had given her enough room to recover. She would be coming for him any second, but he couldn't scrape any more power together.
A full breath of time passed before he realized she wasn't coming after him.
Instead, she dropped to her knees, scrambling in the sand for her jewelry. Blood leaked from her lips, and she wheezed as though trying to speak, but she ended up coughing blood over the ground instead.
Lindon limped forward. His right arm wasn't obeying him, but he had to try something. If he left her alive...
Her hand closed over a tiny jade rectangle. With one last frightened glance at him, she broke it.
The air shattered.
Lindon held his hands up to defend himself from this new attack, but all the weight on his spirit had vanished. Before him, where Ekeri had knelt before, there was an intricate spiderweb of cracks in the air. He swept his spiritual perception through them, but they didn’t feel like madra. They felt like nothing, like they were splintered cracks in existence itself.
He did feel something from beneath the web: one or more of those necklaces was releasing an aura like a Truegold weapon. Though every movement sent agony shooting through his whole body, he slowly knelt and slipped his Remnant hand beneath the cracks, reaching for the necklaces.
If they ended up being dangerous, at least he would only lose the same arm.
The pointed tips of his fingers caught on one string…and passed through. This time, he remembered to send pure madra flowing through the limb before he snagged the necklace, pulling the pile of jewelry free of the web and close to him.
He was eager to inspect them, but ash was still falling around him, and the shrieks of distant Carp were growing closer. He could wait until he was back in the safety of the tunnel.
Lindon limped back, passing piles of gray, pressing his robes to his chest to stop the bleeding. When he reached the rock leading into the tunnel, he could only stare at it blankly.
He’d left Dross inside. He had to wait until they opened the door for him.
With a heavy sigh, he turned to lean his back against the stone, sliding down until he was seated. Somehow, the moment of reaction made
his pain so much worse, as though all his injuries were waiting for him to let his guard down before they mobbed him all at once.
That only lasted a breath before the wall behind him vanished and he tumbled backwards.
When the agony cleared and he stopped groaning, he spoke. “I forgot you could see out.”
Dross drifted out of his gem, a cloud of shifting purple gears and swimming violet lights. “I don’t see Ekeri,” he said, bobbing around the entrance. “And I see the earth has been burned and salted. Who saved you?”
“No one,” Lindon said. He was still lying on his back, so when Orthos stepped up and looked down at him, he saw the turtle’s smile upside-down.
“I won,” Lindon told him, and the truth of it seeped into him like warm honey.
Orthos’ laugh started as a distant chuckle and grew to a massive, merry rumble that shook the floor. “By the time we get out of here, the Skysworn will be asking your permission to speak.”
~~~
Sopharanatoth, dragon of the gold bloodline, sipped winter-wine from a silver chalice. The wine had weak spiritual properties, but its chill was a pleasant contrast to the heat that usually flowed through her veins. And it was a thousand high-grade scales per bottle, so it was appropriate for her position.
Supervising the entrance of Ghostwater was the most luxurious assignment an Underlord could receive. Especially when the primary portal had been destroyed. She and her retinue reclined in a silk tent planted on a Thousand-Mile Cloud ten thousand feet above the portal, scanning the portal every once in a while with their spirits. The destruction of the other exit had made her job easy; now they barely even bothered to sweep the exit once a day. When Sophara's little sister emerged, she would use her gatestone to leave. Which meant she would appear right here, so there was really no need to keep watch at all.
The other gold dragons, Truegolds all, lounged on beds of cloud madra all around the tent, reading books, consulting dream tablets, or snacking on flaming crickets from a cage. As Truegolds, they looked as much like dragons as like humans, but Sophara's soulfire set her apart. Her face was almost entirely human, but for her eyes and the patches of scales on her cheeks. Scales had fallen away elsewhere on her body as well, leaving patches of skin on her arms and legs.
She looked forward to reaching Overlord, when she would have hair, but she found the strands of loose scales tumbling down her shoulders a pleasing approximation.
Some other bloodlines valued their natural forms most highly, and refused to transform even once they had the soulfire to do so. While the power of the dragon form was useful, golds had a more refined aesthetic sense than their brethren. They shared the tastes of Seshethkunaaz, Monarch of Dragons, who had lived for centuries in human form. And there was no denying that madra moved more smoothly through a human body.
Sophara had emptied her chalice and was trying to decide if she wanted another when she felt a crack in her spiritual perception.
In the same instant, a smoking, bleeding golden body tumbled out of nowhere onto her priceless woven rug.
She had kindled a Striker technique before she recognized her little sister. Hurriedly dismissing her madra, she dropped to her knees, pulling Ekeri into her arms.
The Truegold girl stared blankly at the ceiling of the tent, blood staining her lips. A weak cough sent more blood oozing from the scorched wound in her chest.
“Healing!” Sophara commanded, her voice trembling. The other Truegolds shot away to obey, running out for elixirs or reaching into their personal void keys for life-saving constructs.
When her perception delved into her sister's body, her hope shattered. The girl's lifeline was unraveling, green dissipating into aura, and her spirit had already started to congeal. Her Remnant was beginning to form.
Ekeri met her sister's eyes. “I failed,” she said. She coughed up another mouthful of blood and started again. “I failed him. I'm sorry.”
An instant later, she was gone.
A golden serpent slithered away from her body, and Sophara stepped away, eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn't look at her own sister's Remnant.
She heard the Truegolds guiding the spirit away. They would use the Remnant to raise up another student, in honor of her sister, or else they would send it to the Soulsmiths to form it into a guardian treasure for their family, so Ekeri could add to the glory of the bloodline forever.
Or a weapon, to be used against the one who had killed her.
Sophara snapped her eyes open, staring at the wound on her sister's chest. It was black and molten, burned so hot that there was very little blood. On someone other than a dragon, it might not have left any blood at all.
The aura around the wound was black and red, braided together in a recognizable pattern.
Black dragons.
Not even with their bloodline all but eradicated, their authority forgotten, their descendants scattered, would the black dragons leave them alone. Sophara threw back her head, pouring all her rage and her hate into her voice.
When she roared, it was the roar of a dragon. And all the golds roared with her.
Chapter 10
At first, Yerin thought the trip across the island would be quick.
The Sage had marked the basic locations of the other factions on the map. Most of the island was uncontrolled, but there were a few places where they'd have to travel around the territory of the Beast King or the dragons. The portal leading into Ghostwater was on the edge of Redmoon Hall territory. She was tempted to hit them, but forced herself back on track.
To be safe, she thought it might take as much as a week, stepping lightly and using veils. She suspected it would be more like two nights.
The first day, she pushed them so hard that Mercy had to take some elixirs from her storage to stop from collapsing. After midnight passed and they hadn't taken a break, Mercy grabbed Yerin's arm. The Akura's hair was plastered to her forehead, and she breathed like a whipped pack-mule.
“We're not going to get there tonight,” Mercy said, a hint of begging in her tone.
Yerin glanced down at the map. She chafed at the delay, but Mercy had a point. They could use some time to rest and cycle.
“Four hours,” Yerin allowed, and Mercy sagged to the ground, leaving her staff to topple beside her.
When Mercy had caught her breath, she looked into the darkness around her. Distant howls and whispers on the wind told them that these woods were haunted by predators.
“I've never spent the night in the woods before,” Mercy admitted.
Yerin nestled into the crook of a tree, pulling her outer robe around her. “You can thank the heavens it isn't snowing. Some places, this is practically summer.” There was a biting chill on the wind, but nothing that would kill a sacred artist above Iron.
She had piled up a little mound of leaves and dirt, and the roots rose high enough around her to break some of the wind. It wasn't an Arelius guest room, but she'd slept through worse.
Mercy fiddled with the end of her hair, looking from herself to Yerin nervously. “I'm not sure there will be enough room for us both.”
Yerin's elbows were scraping roots on both sides. Her Goldsigns were folded up over her shoulders. “A hair smaller, and I'd have no room for my arms. You can find your own—”
A small door opened in the air.
It was a square opening about four or five feet to a side, sitting on the ground like someone had opened a box without bothering with the actual box part. Without hesitation, Mercy rummaged around inside, pulling out fluffy padded blankets and a metal box that radiated fire aura. A heater.
“It won't be comfortable,” Mercy said, voice downcast. “The tent is really meant for one person.”
“The tent,” Yerin repeated.
Mercy held up a palm-sized square of dark green Forged madra, which snapped into a pyramid-shaped tent. Scripts on the outside provided an extra veil and warded away spirits. Mercy stared at the shelter like she couldn't imagi
ne how they'd ever squeeze both people inside, but to Yerin it looked like a palace.
“If the heavens gave me one wish, I'd ask to be reborn as a Monarch's kid.” Yerin still wasn’t sure how she felt about Mercy, but at least the Akura girl came with supplies.
Mercy's brow furrowed. “It's just a tent.”
Yerin was already climbing inside.
After a night in the tent, Yerin was certain that the journey would be easier than she had ever imagined. They started well-rested, they made good time that first morning, and they had a map. More than once, on her journeys with the Sword Sage, Yerin would have killed for convenience like this.
Their first delay came when they sensed a Redmoon Underlord a few miles ahead of them. They ended up having to stay in the tent, veiled, for a full day before they could confirm the enemy had withdrawn.
Then a flock of Truegold-level vultures caught their scent, forcing them off the path.
Then there was the mammoth that grazed on trees. They had to go around him.
A zone of shadow and darkness covered another hillside as Redmoon Hall skirmished with servants of the Akura family, and they had to sneak past.
Before she knew it, the days flowed like water and they still hadn't reached their destination.
Their speed dropped to a crawl, and they were forced to wait for hours at a time. So Yerin did what she always did when the hours pressed in on her: she trained.
As he fell through the air, the Sword Sage continued to fight.
One of his opponents flew on currents of air, his Ruler technique commanding the wind aura as he soared with no wings. That one produced halfsilver darts, whipping them at the Sword Sage to try and disrupt his madra.
The other rode an eagle like a horse, carrying a long spear in one hand and a shield in the other. Her eyes blazed the same color as her sacred beasts, and sword aura gathered around the eagle's claws.
Her lance-strike carried the putrid, sickly energy of death madra. The wind artist hammered him with gusts of wind madra to keep him off-balance, to knock him into the halfsilver darts.